"Gardeners’ Question Time is not the most controversial show on Radio 4, and yet it is layered with, saturated with, racial meanings. The context here is the rise of nationalism. The rise of racist and fascist parties across Europe. Nationalism is about shoring up a fantasy of national integrity. My question is, what feeds nationalism? What makes nationalism powerful?"

Dr Pitcher said there is a "crisis in white identity in multicultural Britain" caused by the fact that "white culture" is historically associated with racism and far-Right views.

White people are therefore forced to find other ways of talking about white identity – such as through gardening – so they do not appear to be racist....

One response is to say this is "utterly absurd" (which is what a horticulturist on the show said), but overreaction like that displays defensiveness. Pitcher's point is that racists and other persons with racial sentiments that they must otherwise stifle find relief in opining about plants. If that's in fact what's going on, I would expect them to protest when someone threatens to blow their cover.* The way to appear nonracist — that is, the way to keep your cover if you need it — is to find the suggestion intriguing and to explore it with mild intellectual vigor and a delicate infusion of humor.
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In rhetorical terms, the phrase can be thought of as indicating an unintentional apophasis — where the speaker who "protests too much" in favor of some assertion puts into others' minds the idea that the assertion is false, something that they may not have considered before.

"Protest too much" is useful, but it's overused and sometimes used morononically... Morisettishly:

Alanis Morissette wrote a song titled "Doth I Protest Too Much" [sic] for her album So-Called Chaos.

I blame white people for not eradicating their gardens in favor of multicultural plants! It's all part of whitey's genocidal plan to make all plants white! Reparations to black plants are needed, and you all need to stop giggling, because you are racists.

If so, it is interesting to note that the left and left-leaning agencies are extremely active in protesting any incursion of non-native plants or animals anywhere and demanding that such plants and creatures be promptly exterminated.

Years ago, at a time when there were news stories of people in Arizona organizing "vigilante" border patrols, the comic "Rhymes with Orange" had a strip involving a crazy man who goes down to the federal building and volunteers to help an office there keep out foreigners. He rants for a while and in the last panel, the bureaucrat says something like, "I don't have the heart to tell him we deal with plants and animals."

We are meant to see that he is an idiot, while keeping out foreign plants and animals is a good idea. Certainly in America, keeping out "invasive species" is considered progressive while keeping out "invasive humans" is not. Indeed, using that second term is evidence of moral obtuseness.

However, the logic is similar. The idea of invasive species says that there is an existing ecosystem that should be kept that way. Allowing in too many of the wrong kind of foreign plants and/or animals will change the ecosystem in bad ways. The idea of invasive humans say that there is an existing culture/economy that should be kept that way. Allowing in too many of the wrong kind of foreign homo sapiens will change the culture/economy in bad ways.

"Protecting the ecosystem" was the excuse for shooting hundreds of goats and pigs on Catalina Island. They had been there for hundreds of years, dropped off by Spanish ships when California was a Spanish colony.

Pitcher's point is that racists and other persons with racial sentiments that they must otherwise stifle find relief in opining about plants.

Pitcher has no interesting point but there is an interesting point about Pitcher, viz., that people like him, and the politics and policies they support, are the cause of the current "rise of nationalism" and "rise of racist and fascist parties across Europe", which this deep thinker, comically, seems to find so puzzling and so disturbing.

Unsurprisingly, irresponsible "thinkers" would rather stay on the playground, doing quack Freudian semantic analyses of E. Goldstein and the other wreckers, than face up to the mess their stupidities have engendered.

"White people are therefore forced to find other ways of talking about white identity – such as through gardening – so they do not appear to be racist...."

And - after hundreds of years of being racist - they must remember it takes practice, practice, practice.

If whites took themselves seriously - as opposed to focussing their insecurities on others - they'd know they do this constantly. History is replete with whites avoiding the obvious and making up stuff to cope with it:

A black woman caring for her kids, was "trifling" and "idle," but caring for a white child was important "work". (Can't think too hard about slaves being mothers, you see?)

And so on.

The white brain, many times, seems to be a mind field of avoidance and attack strategies, all based on denying the obvious:

Sure, we made you slaves, but that doesn't mean money was taken - because it was whites who made American slavery legal!

Sure, we killed black adults for sport, but that doesn't mean lives today were affected - because how can watching your people get ritually murdered in public affect anyone today?

Sure, you're in poverty now, but none of that other stuff is why - it's your own fault for whining about the making of what proud whites have always called The Greatest Country On Earth.

ANYTHING - but accepting the killing of adults traumatized the community, deprived it of money and breadwinners, and left it open to Federal, state,t and individual plunder.

I'm guessing in 400 years they'll collectively go, "Oh wow - you know what? We WERE wrong after all! And acted like some real bastards!"

Then, they'll immediately get pissed again - as a group of collective "individuals" all spouting the same nonsense - because, after all that time of blacks talking to them, they'll want the credit for eventually coming around.

What's even more hilarious is that the leftist environmentalist notion of "invasive species".

The notion of "invasive species" is counter to natural processes and involves making modern moral value judgments about certain plants being "good" and others being "bad", all the while ignoring how plants and animals actually establish themselves within the natural environment. It certainly isn't predicated on science, but on privileging "native" species, which are merely the flora and fauna that invaded and took over before men got there.

It is also very revealing of the narcissism of the Progressives in that they feel fit to make that determination of good and bad over nature.

How do these eco-dimwits think that islands that formed in the middle of big oceans thousands of years ago got plants and wildlife inhabiting them?

I have the same problem with my better half; she criticizes something in my behavior and I can (a) fix it the way she wants, or (b) be a scum bag by (b.1) trying to explain (overreaction, too defensive) or (b.2) ignoring (passive aggressive response, you never listen to me, etc.). Hobson's choice? Horns of a dilemma?

ANd whites have spent so much time helping others - just ask the indians, or the black men who were told, after the war was over, "Your wife and children better be in the fields."

Lovely people. I read this last night and it cracked me up - also from after the war ended:

"The negroes have commenced pretty generally to Mr, Mrs., and Miss each other. The whites are very jealous of this innovation."

Despite everything they've done, whites are human beings like everyone else. Weaker, even, in some respects - which is why they lash out at others so much - they've repeatedly attacked the unsuspecting to make themselves look big in their own eyes.

But each death means they're even more alone, posing in the mirror, expecting applause.

"I blame white people for not eradicating their gardens in favor of multicultural plants! It's all part of whitey's genocidal plan to make all plants white! Reparations to black plants are needed, and you all need to stop giggling, because you are racists."

The centuries old habit of white's constant belittling us - especially after murder.

They ARE interesting, though, if understanding how white people spin their wheels (to avoid the truth) is - check out the telling of this scene from a plantation diary and see if you understand what's wrong with it:

A Plantation life is a very active one. This morning I got up late having been disturbed in the night, hurried down to have something arranged for breakfast, Ham, & eggs, wrote a letter to Charles in answer to one he wrote about Johns resigning, disapproving of it. Had prayers, got off the boys to town. Had work cut out, gave orders about dinner, had the horse feed fixed in hot water, had the box filled with cork: - went to see about the carpenters working at the negro houses, where there are men mending chimneys, white washing, & these carpenters Mr Grimball told me he wished me to see about every day, & now I have to cut out flannel jackets, and alter some work.

Amy's leg continues very bad, I don't know when she will get better, a most provoking thing, for it is owing to her own stupidity."

The analogy between the two situations is poor. People from different ethnicities can interbreed. Organisms in different species mostly can't interbreed effectively. That makes a huge difference.

The situation with people can be more like that of the American peregrine falcon here (Falco peregrinus anatum), which has hybridized much with peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) from other subspecies of peregrine falcon brought by falconers. It's not a bad thing to let a few of some other subspecies interbreed with a native subspecies. But the American peregrine falcon was recently largely extinct, so one wouldn't want too many foreign peregrine falcons on the loose here, interbreeding right away, because the American peregrine was at populations greatly below historic norms and yet had and has an opportunity to quickly increase in population, after DDT was banned. But it's not clear cut; e.g., if a population decreases to very low levels, alleles that are good when in a hybrid state (with some other corresponding allele) and bad otherwise have a hard time because they need to be rare to be useful--things can get too incestuous is another way of looking at it, if population levels are rather suddenly at historically low levels. It's complicated. As I recall, a few years ago there was some controversy about whether to destroy some of the excessively hybrid chicks. Mostly I thought the chicks should have been allowed to live and intebreed with the native falcons, but I could see there were valid arguments on the other side. On the other hand, all things else equal, I definitely have a preference for native plants.

Minority groups especially deserve special protection when their numbers are greatly below what they used to be. For example, I'd argue that native North Americans and those with much native North American ancestry deserve special benefits until they are well hybridized with the nonnative Americans. Doubtless there are many special qualities that evolved among them when their population was proportionately much larger, and those qualities should not be underrepresented merely because they have to compete with ethnic Eurasians, who along with their diseases evolved over a larger area.

The British have done well historically. Offhand, I think correct policy for them would be to try to allow immigration of a very diverse set of ethnicities, more in proportion to historic population levels of those ethnicities, and allow more immigration from those places that British want to emigrate to (focus on the differences in immigration and emigration). In particular, it's excess indifference to one's own people to allow much immigration from peoples that aren't friendly to immigrants from your country.

My first reaction is of course that the Utterly Absurd party is indubitably right. However, as I read about the earlier controversy about the 'black man's willy' [Rhodochiton atrosanguineus], I have to concede that there may be something to Dr Pilcher's nonsense.

Use your OED, Professor-- Rhodochiton was apparently only introduced in England after 1829. My recollection is that this is just when Abolition is happening.

Stephen, that is most interesting about the peregrine falcon. I was thinking of the Northern spotted owl interbreeding with the barred owl up here in the Pacific Northwest. Apparently there are fertile offspring from such unions, which seems to me to indicate that they are not, in reality, different species.

Does it make sense for humans to try to maintain subspecies, anyway? Only, I think, if the goal is to keep wild animal populations as nearly as possible as they would be if we ourselves didn't exist. But why should we necessarily want that?

"I have the same problem with my better half; she criticizes something in my behavior and I can (a) fix it the way she wants, or (b) be a scum bag by (b.1) trying to explain (overreaction, too defensive) or (b.2) ignoring (passive aggressive response, you never listen to me, etc.). Hobson's choice? Horns of a dilemma?"

You left out another option - and how whites leave stuff out is the point of this topic:

You left out that she's right and there's something in your behavior that needs fixing.

Notice how you write "fix it the way she wants" like you have little agency or desire - don't YOU want to be a better person for your wife to be around? Then why make fixing yourself a huge ordeal that can only happen under pressure?

"How tedious to live under the constant threat of being accused (by oneself, even!) of thoughtcrime."

No, you know what's tedious? Whites lying and being all apocalyptic about it.

People, here, call me a racist every day - I was called a misogynist, too - do I sound scared? I'm actively working to get a public platform for my art and I will monitor my speech not at all for it. Meanwhile, you claim - while whites are still in charge - you're hemmed in.

And hemmed in from what? Continuing to talk racist shit?

You poor suffering babies, like white women learning they had to do their own housework after slavery (and black women could wear dresses white women didn't choose) this must all be so difficult for you to comprehend.

[Snicker.]

Sorry, but I keep trying to explain how 400 years of this culture works on us, but y'all insist on falling in it,...

John Conyers should look into this and perhaps add a feature to the proposed HR40 "study" to include non-indiginous plants which were ripped from Africa during the time of the slave trade.

On the other hand, HR40 is said by govtrack.us to have a 1% chance of being passed and only a 3% chance of ever getting out of committee. There has never been a vote on HR40. My own congressman is one of two co-sponsors. They have never shown an interest in the economic impact of the extraction of plants from Africa but perhaps that is the component that is missing from HR 40.

Black-eyed peas, actually beans, along with yams were stolen from Africa along, as has been written, philosophy itself. Philosophy apparently disappeared completely whilst black-eyed peas and yams continued to be grown in Africa so it might well be impossible to attach monetary reparations to the extraction of these foodstuffs. But you never know.

So, oddly, expressing hostility to black-eyed peas (a favorite of mine) would itself be racist even though the beans themselves are non-native plants. Which again goes to show that the author of the cited article did not think quite deeply enough. The topic is fertile, however.

I had a wife once that I cared about and tried to address her concerns with no success. After a long enough time, I came to accept that there was nothing I could do that would satisfy her. To her, I was wrong because I was me. I stopped caring and stopped trying.

I used to think a lot about race matters trying to decide what I could do. For some time now it's been clear that nothing I do will make any difference. To some people I'm wrong because I'm me. I've stopped caring. There is no more certain way to make a person stop caring than showing that they can never be anything but wrong.

It's strange to me that this is, in essence, the injustice of racism that started the problem. Soon I will not care even enough to remark on this circumstance. To defend yourself against a monomaniac or a fanatical belief system in any fashion except to meet force, if it should come to that, with force is foolishness.

Michelle Dulak Thomson, There is no Platonic essence of "species," though before Darwin lots of educated people thought there was. John Wilkins recently wrote an entire book about the different species concepts that have been used or are used today, "Species: A History of the Idea (2011)."

The question of whether something is a species, a sub-species, a population, or something else has no right answer. Indeed, the Endangered Species Act definition of species would be called sub-species or population by most biologists.

And, of course, everything that is called a new species began as offspring that were slightly different--but different enough for some purpose--from their parents.

The white brain, many times, seems to be a mind field of avoidance and attack strategies, all based on denying the obvious

Astute of you to observe that cognitive biases, like slavery and murder and cruelty, are specifically a white thing and not common to human beings in every race and culture. As a person of color, you are fortunately immune to such biases and need not worry that your thinking might be shaped by anything other than facts and logic.

Despite everything they've done, whites are human beings like everyone else. Weaker, even, in some respects - which is why they lash out at others so much

Said the guy who constantly writes posts lashing out at white people.

How do whites avoid their long-held racism - and does anyone else see their mental self-manipulations as they do so?

If a white person doesn't display any behavior indicating he is a racist, one possible explanation is that he isn't racist. There are other possible explanations, but all involve making additional assumptions -- the sort of thing people might do if they are operating out of bias, for instance (though as established previously, only white people do this).

If one accepted Crack as a valid representative of his professed race (or accepted that other members of his race have similar views, as he asserts) and drew conclusions based on that fact it would be racist.

Does it make sense for humans to try to maintain subspecies, anyway? Only, I think, if the goal is to keep wild animal populations as nearly as possible as they would be if we ourselves didn't exist.

I'd say there is little reason to keep a subspecies from mixing with other subspecies if it is not the case that the subspecies has been severely disadvantaged by humans compared to the other subspecies. If humans transporting animals has caused it to occur unnaturally, it is still not a big deal, though I suppose it could lead to a superspecies that gives that species such an advantage over other species as to possibly lead to undesirable extinctions (not especially relevant for endangered falcons) of other species competing with it.

As for spotted owls, if there were formerly a great many spotted owls compared to what there are now whereas formerly there were about as many barred owls as there are now, then increasing the spotted owl population seems preferable to now intermixing them with barred owls, even if the cross have normal fertility. One could say the same thing (with less fervor) about the Northern spotted owl subspecies and the California spotted owl subspecies if the former have suffered much more than the latter. (But if for thousands of years the Northern spotted owl subspecies has always been rare compared with the California spotted owl subspecies, then, yeah, maybe the practical thing to do would be to breed the two together.) There would be many more special alleles on the unnaturally rare spotted owls than on less unnaturally rare competitor owls, and it would be a shame to allow many of those special alleles to die out from randomness just on account of there not being enough rare spotted owl. And let's say the barred owl leads a slightly different lifestyle than the spotted owl--that too would make it too hard for spotted owls if their specialness gets diluted into the barred owl, though it's much better than the spotted owl all just dying.

I suppose it is hard to determine whether two variants are different species or different subspecies, but it always seems best to advantage the unnaturally disadvantaged (unless there be something worse about the unnaturally disadvantaged, as might happen if these be crop plants or plants with flowers of very different beauty levels, for example, in which case moderately paced selection for traits humans need or find especially beautiful is presumably appropriate).

In a few cases, it does seem appropriate to encourage even species to (unnaturally) mix. For example, breeders are trying to introduce into the American chestnut genetic material from foreign chestnuts so that the American chestnut will be resistant to chestnut blight. But it seems they are trying to do this the right way, by crossing the plants for many generations to create resistant chestnut tress that are almost all American chestnut, and then planting many seedlings from those trees. This would seem preferable to just planting a bunch of foreign chestnuts. Regardless of whether different species or different subspecies are being introduced, it still mostly seems ideal and conserving of the most beauty that the especially unnaturally disadvantaged species or subspecies be advantaged in hybridization compared with what it is making a hybrid with.

The spotted owl and barred owl are populations separated by the last ice age. In the [our] ensuing interglacial, populations have linked up again. The barred owl followed settlement across the Canadian prairie and then down the Pacific Coast.

They can produce fertile offspring, which arguably makes them the same species still.

The spotted owl is all hipster foodie. Really prefers to eat just locally produced flying squirrels and live in suitably bohemian old growth forests.

The barred owl is more of an omnivore, including a love for spotted owl eggs. It lives in the old growth, the new growth and doesn't mind coming in and living with the peeps in the cities.

It's nice having owls on the edge of Portland. They are great hunters. But, to save the spotted owls from their near-certain natural merger with their cousins, we in Oregon, in our wisdom, are going to decimate [that's 10% of population] the barred owl and see if it keeps Oregon Green.

Earthworms, dandelions and lawn grass are alien to North America. All are European imports.

Tomatoes, potatoes and corn are native to the Americas, they are alien in Europe, Africa and China

So no tomato spaghetti sauce in Italy,no mealies in Africa, no potatoes in Ireland.

No lawn grass OR dandelions in the US - possibly a plus.

Earthworms in the US must die. Take that all you gardeners.

But we have to be careful in analyzing invasive species. Remember that not long ago (geologically) West Africa and the American South were joined as Gondwanaland. For this reason the soil and plants have many similarities. Hence it may be that the Africans brought here as slaves to be farmers have a greater affinity for the land in the South than any other group including the Indians. It's a known fact that the rice farmers brought from Africa to South Carolina were brought because it was known when they were being seized that they were better at handling the soil along the South Carolina lowlands than any other group, African or European. First, they showed how to grow indigo there and then rice. There's no excuse for seizing these African farmers and denying them their freedom but there was a reason - only they knew how to handle the soil in the South which is really African soil. Paradoxically they are the real "Sons of the South"

All in all, I don't think that discussions about "native" plants as a proxy for "native sons" are really based on the facts about geology and farming.

"Astute of you to observe that cognitive biases, like slavery and murder and cruelty, are specifically a white thing and not common to human beings in every race and culture."

For the life of me, I cannot understand why whites didn't agree with Obama that Americans aren't exceptional when - as soon as you point out the truly exceptional things they've done - they defend themselves by immediately not being representatives of "All Men Are Created Equal" and a country, or even "The New World," but no better than common barbarians.

Good one, Hunter.

BTW - comparing us to Africa, for instance - did you know that in 1935 (that's 70 years after the Civil War for those keeping track at home) when wife and mother Mrs. Andrew Williams quit her job as a cook in a white home, because they cut her pay in half, her employer kidnapped her for the rest of her life? Even after her family wrote the president for help?

Like you said, happens everywhere, and that means nobody can ever complain in America because - whites said so, and say so, and so it will be so.

Or - as those whites who tried to keep us enslaved discovered - it'll go just so-so. Not really.

Then they'll say we've got a"bad attitude".

That's how they are when they realize their interests aren't being accepted as everybody's. Nobody wants to carry white's water? "Lazy."

Watching whites get delusional, here, is like the highlight of my day:

HoodlumDoodlum,

"If one accepted Crack as a valid representative of his professed race (or accepted that other members of his race have similar views, as he asserts) and drew conclusions based on that fact it would be racist.

Supporting Crack is an objectively racist act.,..."

Gee, someone asked a random New Yorker what he thought today - black Gentleman -and he sounded surprisingly like me: